At Vanzara Faliya in Nandarva village of Panchmahals district, villagers in the age group of 18-60 years recently built a road under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).

But for the last one week, despite some payments after six months of shuttling between the village post office and the panchayat, eight families of this locality do not have enough to eat.

Deepika’s family of eight, out of which four of her sisters worked for the road in April, had been sharing three rotlas among themselves as the only meal in the day for the last six months. This continued till the first two instalments of the payments were made in August-end after a local tribal farmer, Rangeet ‘Swami’ Baria, made representations to District Development Officer S Swaroop and Panchmahals District Collector Milind Torwane.

“Among the four of us, we got only Rs 400 for five days of work, which makes it Rs 20 for a day’s work done in April,” says Deepika, adding that none of the families have BPL cards to get cheap ration.

Elsewhere, Hemabhai Naika, a 58-year-old farmer and father of two who also worked with him for the same road connecting Nandarva with neighbouring Nada village, has received only the first instalment.

“My sons and I got Rs 500 for the first week of the work,” says Naika, adding that now he does not want to work for any NREGS project.

He, along with other villagers from the community, now earn their livelihood by manually crushing stones. “Here, a tractor comes after every two weeks and we are instantly paid Rs 200 per tractor full of stones and pebbles,” adds Naika.

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